


Red Lights

by carolyncaves



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff, Light-Hearted, M/M, MT!Prompto, background Gladnis - Freeform, but without most of the usual anguish, only a little ridiculous, with a few cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 11:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolyncaves/pseuds/carolyncaves
Summary: They found him wandering around in the desert. At first they thought he had heatstroke. Or at least, that was their excuse for not figuring it out more quickly.It turns out the modifications they give MTs are wildly inappropriate for ... really almost anything else.





	Red Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [errantknightess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/errantknightess/gifts).

> Written for errantknightess for the FFXV Jeopardy prompt challenge. She hit the Daily Double and for her bonus fic requested a comic take on MT!Prompto, where his modifications are ludicrously over-the-top in normal situations. That is, obviously, a fantastic concept, so thanks again for giving me such a great request!
> 
> Also a huge thank you to TheRegalHarvester for betaing. The style of this was a little experimental for me and you were seriously a big help.

They found him wandering around in the desert. At first they thought he had heatstroke. Or at least, that was their excuse for not figuring it out more quickly.

He had weird black clothes, and a weird walk, and when they tried to talk to him, he gave weird answers. He wore a dirty, worn baseball cap that read “Ramuh’s Light” pulled way down over his right eye. It didn’t match the rest of him, and he barely looked old enough to drink – plus he seemed nothing like a Leiden good-ole’-boy in Gladio’s opinion – so they suspected he’d stolen it. Or found it.

Noctis asked him where he came from. “I’m from the city,” he said, very carefully, an answer he’d obviously practiced in advance.

“Bull shit,” Gladio replied.

“Perhaps not,” Ignis countered. “Rather, I think the operative question would be: which city?”

His face fell. He hadn’t planned what to do if that didn’t work. “Gralea,” he conceded, and there was a lot of yelling after that.

They quickly ascertained he was an MT, that he got separated from his unit, and that he did _not_ want to go back. He told them this less because there were several blades suddenly pointed at his vulnerable parts (although there definitely were) and more because he really had no filter. Gladio growled at him to empty his pockets, slowly, and take off his hat. He didn’t have any pockets, he said apologetically, but he did remove the hat, and their jaws hit the desert floor.

He had a few bits of metal embedded in the skin around his eye socket, which must have had some functional relation to the robotic eye seated at their center. It was metallic silver, and the pupil glowed a menacing red that was entirely at odds with the soft, slightly anxious face that housed it.

“He’s the Terminator,” Noctis breathed.

Gladio grunted. “He’s a fricking Niff borg. What are we going to do with him?”

“Maybe we could take him to Hammerhead,” Noctis said. “See if the hunters will watch him until someone can pick him up.”

“No, this is a sensitive security issue.” And potentially dangerous, Ignis thought but didn’t say. “We’ll have to take care of him ourselves.”

There was a pensive silence. ‘Take care of him’ sounded like something out of a mafia movie, and none of them liked the thought of that.

"We’ll take him to Cor,” Gladio said, “at Cape Caem. He’ll handle it. Question him for intel, then put him somewhere the Crownsguard can keep an eye on him.”

That plan was deemed acceptable by all parties. Including, apparently, their captive, who’d stood calmly while he waited for them to decide what would happen to him. He knew he hadn’t been very good at deciding things for himself. That was how he got stranded in the desert. It was a bit of a relief, having people to tell him what to do again, especially since they were people who weren’t his old commanders.

“It’s a long way to Caem, and he’s rather conspicuous,” Ignis said.

“Yeah, the glowing red is hard to miss,” Noctis deadpanned.

“Don’t suppose you can turn it off or anything,” Gladio asked him.

“No,” he replied. “I can’t deactivate it, and it houses the processor for the rest of my modifications. I can only go without it for a short time.” And then, to _demonstrate_, he reached up and did something and his metal eye clicked free into his fingers. They barely had time to process that, or the metal hollow behind it, before he shuddered and gasped horribly and clutched at his chest.

With a panicked “_No!_”, they lunged toward him in unison, hands everywhere. Between the three of them, they managed to get him to put it back.

“No,” Ignis repeated sternly. “No,” Gladio agreed, steady hands glued to that trembling chest and back. “No,” Noctis promised, looking him plain in the eye.

“Okay,” he said weakly. Then he heaved a sad string of stomach acid onto the toe of Gladio’s boot and fainted. He did, it turned out, have heat stroke.

———

They took him to the motel at Longwythe, so they could get him air conditioning and a bed, and food and water, and, well, everything. He accepted each of these treatments with exhausted, pliant obedience.

The second day, he seemed a lot more alive. They got him to tell his story (which was horrifying), and he asked them a million questions, about everything from why daemons came out at night to how people got their haircuts (which was … unreasonably cute). He watched Noctis play King’s Knight for hours, mesmerized, and he picked the name “Prompto” himself, out of a magazine. A magazine Gladio had open on the coffee table on the other side of the room.

They all stopped what they were doing and gave him three hard looks.

“You’re telling me you can read that?” Gladio asked.

“Of course,“ he said.

"So it can zoom,” Noctis said, of the robotic eye. “Is that all?”

"No,” Prompto answered simply. No one pressed him to elaborate, but they each tried to imagine.

———

When they decided he was fit to travel, they gave him a gun. He had to be able to defend himself, Noctis and then Ignis maintained. Gladio grudgingly allowed it, because he seemed perfectly willing to defend them too.

It turned out he actually was a little like the Terminator, in that he was terrifyingly relentless at killing things. He also wasn’t, in that once they exposed him to the concept of high-fives, he insisted on cheerfully exchanging one with each of them after every successful battle. Gladio still wasn’t entirely comfortable keeping him armed, considering his prowess. “Just until we get to Cape Caem,” Ignis demurred.

A few days later, when Gladio and Ignis weren’t looking, Noctis added Prompto to the Armiger.

When Ignis noticed, when he felt their magical party line stretch to accommodate one more irrevocable door, he let out one of the longest sighs of his life.

———

It took them two weeks to get to Lestallum – they got sidetracked by a long and unnecessary and debilitatingly heartwarming interlude at the Chocobo Ranch – but Ignis still said they could stay for a few days. To let the weariness of the road wash off them, and to give Prompto a chance to see the city. (Before they handed him over to Cor’s custody for the remainder of the war – or longer.)

The Leville was always a welcome sight, and Prompto seemed to feed off their palpable relief. He was energetic despite the heat, effusively delighted by the crowds of people in the streets, the shady ambiance of the Leville’s lobby, the spacious arrangement and … _eclectic_ décor of their customary room.

“And what’s that?” he asked, pointing at the enormous spider on the wall beside one of the shuttered patio doors.

“Holy shit,“ Gladio said, leaping back in horror.

"Oh my gods kill it,” Noctis said, and Prompto had already readied the emergency weapons system in his modified eye in response to Gladio’s alarm, so he discharged a shot.

“Now let’s all remain calm …” Ignis had begun to say, but the plasma bolt slipped through the air, detonating on impact with the intruding arachnid.

A sudden, still silence filled the room. A golden ray of warm Lestallum sunlight shone through the new hole in their hotel room’s exterior wall. Ignis stood blinking in the gently swirling dust. The chatter and noise of the city filtered in from below, much clearer than usual.

“The target is neutralized,” Prompto said, in case they weren’t sure.

“Holy shit,” Gladio repeated.

“Well. We can thank the Six for the infinite patience and steadfast loyalty of the managers of the Leville,” Ignis said. “There goes yet another security deposit,” he added more quietly, almost to himself.

“That’s a brick wall,” Gladio said, drifting closer to the aperture to get a better look.

“Why didn’t you use the Armiger?” Noctis asked him. He seemed a little hurt.

“Oh – I forgot,” Prompto answered. His gun materialized in his hand. “It was just a reflex, using the eye. Next time I’ll use the gun instead.”

“_No_,” Ignis and Gladio responded emphatically. Noctis snorted. Then they all sat Prompto down and explained the difference between life-threatening and non-life-threatening situations.

———

Showing Prompto around Lestallum was a lot of fun, though. Noctis used some gil he’d hidden from Ignis and took him to all the restaurants, buying him as many different foods as possible. He would sometimes babble about internal temperature and chemical compositions (“high capsaicin levels, avoid if possible,” he pronounced before biting into a super-hot hot wing), but the rest of the time he babbled about how much he was enjoying himself. Each new thing was different from anything Prompto had ever had, and he loved all of them. Noctis just kind of let it wash over him. It was dangerously addictive, getting Prompto to smile. Noctis wanted to do it as often as he could while he had the chance.

Eventually they were both too full to continue (even Prompto, who ate like a machine, literally), so they started the slow, sweltering walk back to the Leville, where Noctis planned to introduce Prompto to the concept of a food coma.

But Prompto had stopped talking, and Noctis didn’t want that just yet. “So, like, what do you see with that?”

Prompto reached up and fiddled with his hair. They’d combed it over his evil eye when they arrived – it had seemed too mean to make him walk around with something blocking half his vision, and also wearing a hat like that looked insane. They were trying to keep a low profile, so Ignis had decided they would attempt the subtle approach.

The red glow was only a little noticeable.

“I see the world, plus extra things. Everything around me, I get information, potential uses, potential hazards. Whatever I’m actually focused on, there’s target assist – trajectory modelling based on gravity, wind speed, movement predictions. Living creatures, I get threat assessments … uh, all the people are either ‘high’ or ‘very high’ now, because everyone is an enemy. So right now I’ve got a bunch of red lights in the corners of my eyes. Usually, it’s just you and the others.”

“I’m not your enemy,” Noctis said quietly.

“I know. It’s a dumb computer. I hardly even notice them anymore, especially yours. I always look at your eyes instead.” Prompto swallowed. “Um, I can see infrared. That one I can turn up and down.” He looked up at the Leville. “Like now I can see Gladio and Ignis in our room. It looks like they’re engaged in some kind of grappling exercise.”

Noctis couldn’t make that series of words make sense. “Huh?”

“Yeah, they’re writhing around on one of the beds. Ignis is pinning Gladio to the mattress.” Prompto considered the display. “It looks like he’s definitely winning.”

It took Noctis a really pathetically long time to figure out what Prompto was describing. When he did, he pressed his hands to his face and slowly bent double at the waist. A long, muffled groan filtered up to Prompto’s ears.

“Gladio’s putting up a good fight, ” Prompto assured him.

Noctis couldn’t move or speak or exist comfortably for several minutes. When he’d recovered a little, he turned them around and made them go get ice cream. Prompto was still really full, so he didn’t know why he’d changed his mind, but the ice cream was as amazing as all the rest, so he didn’t worry about it.

Later, when they did go back to the room, Noctis’ face was very red. After Gladio kept needling him about it, he walked over and whispered something in both Gladio’s and Ignis’ ears that made them blush too.

“Your Highness,” Ignis said faintly, “I apologize. Gladio and I, we’ve …”

“Please,” Noctis said. “It’s fine. It’s good. I’m happy for both of you. Let’s not.”

“Of course,” Ignis replied.

Then Gladio sat Prompto down for another lesson. He called this one “The Talk”. He kept stumbling and stopping and starting over, so eventually Ignis joined in. Noctis lay limp on the bed. He wouldn’t look anywhere but the carpet.

Prompto thought regular people were very strange sometimes.

When they were done, the room lapsed into an awkward silence. An awkward, thoughtful silence.

“Oh my goodness.” Noctis sat up. He couldn’t believe it had taken him this long to think of it. Probably because of his inferno of embarrassment. “Let’s go fishing. Right now.”

“Seriously?” Gladio said.

“He can _see_ the fish,” Noctis replied. “He can probably read their minds.”

“That’s cheating.”

“It’s winning. I’m going to win fishing. I’ll be king of the fish.”

“Noctis, you are the rightful King of Lucis,” Ignis pointed out, but Noctis was too busy showing Prompto pictures of what a Regal Aparaima looked like to care.

“We’re not going right now,” Gladio said. “It’s almost dark.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“We should be making our way to Cape Caem,” Ignis suggested.

“We can take a detour to the Vesperpool,” Noctis said, and neither Gladio nor Ignis actually disliked that idea, so they did.

———

They spent a long afternoon and evening on the edge of the Vesperpool. Ignis took the opportunity to organize his corner of the Armiger, and when he was through with that, he actually sat down and did _nothing_ for nearly fifteen minutes. Gladio pretended to read and dozed in his camp chair. Eventually they both meandered down to the dock, where Noctis was and had been fishing. Prompto hovered at his elbow with his eyes trained on the water – though really only the one mattered at that particular moment. He could see every fish beneath the murky surface, and his HUD predicted their movements based on every twitch of a fin. He spoke quiet, constant analysis into Noctis’ ear, and Noctis caught every fish he wanted. He could pick his targets at will, based on species and size, before even casting his line – and because he knew what his mark was going to do almost as soon as it did, his lines were lasting three times longer. It was, very nearly, like shooting fish in a barrel.

“You’re really gonna make him stand there all day doing that?” Gladio remarked. “He’s not your personal assistant.”

Noctis only had a heartbeat to feel guilty before Prompto said, “I like it.” He’d been holding a fold of Noctis’ shirt between his fingers for the past hour, and for a second he tugged on it, like he was trying to reel Noctis in. Then he shook himself. “Unless that’s bad, in which case …”

“If you like it, it’s not bad,” Noctis said, catching his arm before he could pull away. “I promise.”

“Oh,” Prompto said, clasping Noctis’ arm in return. “Okay.” They cut a striking picture like that – an ex-MT and a displaced prince, pressed close to one another at the edge of the swamp, gazing longingly into each other’s eyes. Gladio could feel a sneeze coming on – he was allergic to sap – so he gave them each a hard shove, sending them into the water with a pair of squawks.

This display of dominance was short-lived, because Gladio immediately jumped after them in a panic – he didn’t actually know if Prompto was waterproof or not. But Prompto came up laughing, and he and Noctis immediately pounced on Gladio. In theory Gladio should have been able to overpower them, but in reality he was toast. Prompto came equipped with _enhanced lung efficiency_ – Gladio swore up and down when he discovered that one, when Prompto latched onto his legs underwater and never let go – and that plus his fast-as-lightning reflexes and strong-as-steel muscles made him pretty much impossible to slip away from.

(Not unlike, Noctis would later point out over their campfire, the Terminator.)

———

The next morning, Noctis _did_ catch a Regal Aparaima, and then they had no excuse not to proceed to Cape Caem. When they arrived, Noctis stepped out of the car, took a deep breath of sea salt air, and sighed. It was a sigh of relief and some other thing, both wrapped up together. Someone up the hill must have spotted them, because the door to the farmhouse opened.

Luna was there. It had taken Cid forever to get the royal boat fixed, but once he did, he went to Altissia and got her, and now Noctis felt the swift, sudden urge to run and hug her and listen to her tell him everything was finally going to be all right. But Cor was also there, frowning at Prompto, a stranger, and Noctis realized very suddenly that he didn’t want this next thing to happen.

“We shouldn’t tell him,” Noctis said, as the greeting party came down the slope. “Prompto, I’m being serious now, don’t tell them.”

“Little late for that,” Gladio said. “What’s his cover story? What about his fricking eye?”

“At this range, there will be no mistaking it,” Ignis agreed.

With a fwish of the Armiger, Noctis plucked his fishing cap out of thin air and shoved it onto Prompto’s head. Together, they fixed it down over his tell-tale eye.

Then they turned to meet the inquisitive gazes of Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, Cid Sophiar, Iris Amicitia, and Cor Leonis.

“Luna,” Noctis said, and then he did hug her, for a second. She hugged him back just as hard. Then he remembered he was the prince, and someone had to say something, and that someone was probably him. He stepped back and kind of steeled himself. “This is Prompto,” he said mostly to Cor. “We found him –”

“Met him,” Ignis corrected.

“– met him in Longwythe,” Noctis revised. “We. Um.”

“He’s a sharpshooter,” Gladio said, coming to the rescue. “He wanted to do something about the Niffs and he knew how to fight, so he’s been with us ever since. He’s been a big help.”

“He’s a sharpshooter with one eye?” Cid asked, skeptical.

“He has heterochromia,” Ignis said, so casually Noctis and Gladio almost believed it. “He’s self-conscious about it,” Ignis explained.

“That’s all right,” Iris said. “I think that’s really neat! What color is it? Your other eye, I mean – this one’s such a pretty blue.”

Prompto stared at her, searching for an answer. He wasn’t good at lying. He was taking way too long. “Brown,” Gladio said, at the same moment Ignis said, “Grey.”

They both tried not to wince and failed.

Cor gave them a look that was definitely not an eye roll but wanted to be. He reached out slowly and lifted the cap off Prompto’s head. That red metal eye was still under there, right where they’d left it.

“Oh,” Iris piped in a strangled sort of way. “Wow.”

“Yeah, that’s what we thought,” Noctis murmured.

Cid shouldered up next to Cor and leaned in to squint at Prompto’s weaponized eye. “Son, is that Magitek?”

Prompto parted his lips in shock, and Noctis and Gladio and Ignis tried to use the collective power of their minds to will Prompto into saying anything other than yes. Prompto squirmed, looked at them despondently, and answered, “Yes.”

They’d gotten used to long silences, and there was another one after that. One they were sure meant something terrible was finally happening. Then Luna laughed, bright and clear and pure.

“You should see your faces,” she explained at Noctis’ scandalized expression. “A Magitek eye, what’s so wrong with that? You say he’s been a great help to you. It doesn’t matter where he came from – only where he is now.”

Cid and Cor were giving each other a pair of very incredulous looks, and Iris’ face was an uncertain mixture of horrified and horribly curious. But Noctis was pretty sure that with Luna’s unreserved vote, the balance couldn’t help but tilt in Prompto’s favor.

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I can’t write MT!Prompto without making it Promptis and Gladnis. As failings go, it’s not the worst.
> 
> Inspo: errantknightess, obviously, as discussed. Also [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226054) by magitekunit05953234, whose aching take on a heavily-modified MT!Prompto definitely influenced my own.
> 
> I'm still hanging around on tumblr [@carolyncaves](https://carolyncaves.tumblr.com/).


End file.
